Forget, Remember, Forget, Remember... sigh

I’ve started Morning Nutbags up again, as I’ve written about over here, but there’s much more going on with my morning routine than that.

It’s really a three parter: first there is reading and journaling for about 20 minutes. Then I get on the Morning Nutbags zoom and do about 30 minutes of functional movement targeted to the specific issues and needs of my own body (I could make that for you, by the way… just sign up for a one on one and we can figure it out… I digress because SQUIRRELS!).

And finally after the nutbags, I go out for a walk.

I always hit this wall with walking where I suddenly just CANNOT anymore. It’s BORINGGGGGG! I whine and I just stop.

It doesn’t mean I’m not ever walking, ha, but it does mean I give up the daily of it.

Then I start again and remember all the things that I have forgotten approximately ONE MILLION (pinky to mouth) times in my life:

First, I like it. It feels good to get outside and be around people and the energy of our neighborhood.

Second, I really like listening to podcasts and stimulating my brain with other people’s insights.

Third, I also really like turning on some Go Gos or something high energy and walking really fast. It starts to almost feel like dancing. It makes me smile at people. (Scary.)

Fourth, and this one is really what I’m writing about…

My hips are so damn tight when I don’t walk like this every day.

We sit. We all SIT WAY TOO MUCH.

We know this. But we don’t REALLY know it until we FEEL it.

And for too many humans, we don’t really feel it until it becomes a screaming sort of pain and then a serious chronic issue.

Often we say things like… well, I am aging… or well, that’s what happened to my grandmother…

But really? It’s quite simply that we just sit TOO. DAMN. MIUCH.

Because guess what? In about a week or so, my hips will no longer ache at the beginning of my walks because body adjusts so freaking fast when we give it even a tiny bit of what it needs.

FREE 20 Minute Zoom Class to Help with Anxiety and Anger

This Friday, July 1st, I'll be doing a FREE QUICKIE (20 minutes) on Zoom specifically to deal with ANGER and FEAR and all the things we're feeling right now.

This is simple breath and movement work that can be done seated on the floor or in a chair. I always offer tons of modification.

This is also community ritual, which we definitely need more of right now (and forever).

We'll be doing a combo of a bunch of things I regularly use in the Peony Method (whether quickie or longer classes) that focus on the nervous system and creating happy brain chemical cocktails.

You can join without your camera on but I would love to see you!

We'll meet at 11:10 AM (United States, Eastern Time).

Once I see the interest, I'll get everyone the link.

Please let me know if you want to be included. You can give me a shout here or on Facebook messenger or anywhere where you and I interact.

I’ll also share a recording of this in the Sanctuary so if you can’t make it live, you can still access the work. (If you’re not in the Sanctuary, ask me to add you.)

Joy List

May we all find joy and pathways to joy through curiosity even as the world seems to be… doing not great things around us. We have to stay energized for the work that needs to be done. We can’t succumb to despair. The people causing the world to be so ugly certainly never give up and so mustn’t we. But to make a world different from the one they want, we also have to work for it differently and that includes staying in and expressing and experiencing joy wherever and whenever we can.

If you have things you would add to this list for yourself, I would love to hear from you!

My most recent big joy was getting to Erie and then getting to the lake. Getting my toes in big water is one of my happy happiest places. Walking on those tiny pebbles is one of my favorite things. Trying to capture the water in photos is something that will forever be a mild (maybe not mild…) obsession.

I need to make it more of a regular practice to get to bigger water, whether Lake Erie or another big body of water.

When I first bought this new bio of Sylvia Plath I wasn’t ready to read it, but now I am and it’s awakening my love of language again. I’m also rereading The Bell Jar.

Gardening is taking off here at our new, very old house. (Built in 1882.) I’m super in love with this new rose we just planted though I’ll have to wait until next year to really appreciate it.

Even if you’re not a huge basketball fan (I’m pretty rabid…), this movie was freaking amazing. And it’s full of hope and good things. It makes you believe in dreams again.

This man is, right now, the joy of music in one body. His new album is downright effervescent. And this video is, well… watch it.

I haven’t written about it much, but we went to see Tears for Fears, and I can’t really do justice with words. First, it was an outdoor venue in Cincinnati and the weather was perfect. But second, MY GOD THE VOICE OF ROLAND. You really have no idea until you hear him live. He can’t be captured in a studio. Not even freaking close. And the woman who backed them up?!?! Again, MY GOD. Here’s my favorite song after their current album (which is fanfreakingtastic and worth a listen).

A huge joy right now for me is that I’m really getting back to some intense and regular movement practices. For a while now, I’ve just been hanging on… and so mostly I’ve been moving and dancing only when I was teaching. (Besides some walks and little things here and there.)

But suddenly something has switched in my brain and I’m back to daily explorations of my own practices, of course, but also pilates and a variety of other things. I just ordered new books about Butoh and general movement for the first time in too long to calculate.

My movement obsession brain has turned back on after years of being off or just slightly buzzing in the background and I am so very happy and relieved.

Again, I’d love to hear from YOU!

Morning Nutbags Redux (with some changes)

When I started the Morning Nutbags morning zoom group for people to establish routines and rituals to create better starts to their days (and by “people” I mostly mean me… ha…), I really thought I would just do it for a couple of weeks.

That couple of weeks turned into almost 5 months. And then it just started to feel… off… or stale, and I thought maybe it had to do with the time of year we were entering into. Better weather, I thought, would negate the need for the group.

Now it’s been nearly two months without the group, and though at first, I was relieved not to have that responsibility Monday through Friday because you know… sleep, over the weeks it kept getting clearer and clearer to me how much I actually really need it.

And some in the group were meeting up here and there even during those months off. So others need it too.

New Format

We will be starting this group on Tuesday, July 5th.

This group will still be on Zoom. That’s the easiest thing.

We will start at 8:30 AM Eastern U.S. time. We will stay on zoom for about a half hour. At the end of the half hour, I’ll ring a little bell and we can say HAVE A NICE DAY! to each other.

But here’s the biggest changes:

There won’t be a waiting room so you come in between 8:30 and 8:35 AM. (No later so people aren’t distracted.)

You’ll enter muted and in silence because some people will already be doing their thing.

That’s it. No morning chat … not until AFTER if at all.

The point is to be there for each other energetically to help each other with our devotions.

When you enter, I might already be on the floor doing morning movement.

Or I’ll be writing.

Someone else might be meditating or painting.

That’s the point. It’s a quiet, supported room.

If you’re interested give me a shout on Facebook messenger.

I’ll create a group message where I’ll eventually share the link.

These times seem to be for breaking hearts

I shared this meme on my Facebook business page in the hours right before we knew what had happened in Uvalde, Texas.

And that night there was class to teach. Which seemed ridiculous, right?

Until one student said, “I knew this was one of the safest places I could be right now for my mental health.”

Amen and thank you.

Community has always been such a huge part of the classes I teach.

I can remember when I first started teaching in my very own space in Erie, and how many times, new students would come up to me afterward and tell me they’d never felt so instantly welcomed and safe… that when they went to yoga spaces in town sometimes they weren’t talked to. ((WHAT?!)) Or that exercise spaces just felt too competitive and there was none of that in our space.

Amen and thank you, again.

It seems that that has not changed at all on Zoom and that feels like a little miracle to me. That we can meet from across so many many miles, and still, the main thing that happens in class together is that we are present to one another and we move in compassion, witnessing and being witnessed in whatever is happening for us in that moment, whether articulated with words or silence.

Movement is life, for sure. These bodies are built to move (in whatever way currently capable) and it’s all written in our cells and DNA that this movement should be, needs to be joyful and communal.

And yet…

The real reason for these classes and the real reason for movement is that the best way for us to bond deeply is through these bodies, engaged in nonsexual intimacies that are SEVERELY lacking in our current culture.

We are aching to be seen.

We are dying to be heard.

Literally.

Anger, hatred, fear… if you trace it back to its very origins, it always comes to this: these people who walk around every day with hearts of stone (who may or may not act on that in a directly violent way)… these people are screaming inside to be seen and heard.

They don’t have the tools to know how to simply ask for what they need.

They either weren’t taught, or when they were quite small, those tools were used but denied.

These times seem to be for breaking hearts… I mean this in so many ways.

There is a breaking that is good and healthy. It’s the breaking that happens when we’re very young and we’ve learned that we are safe and it’s time to venture out on our own.

It’s the breaking that happens when we lose someone we loved more than we thought possible and yet we continue on and their memory becomes the foundation of our strength and hope.

It’s the breaking that teaches us what we want and need by showing us what we do not want and do not need.

It’s a breaking that too many have hardened themselves against and so they stockpile — whether it be guns or cruelty or hatred or shame or power over others.

We must also stockpile…

But we must stockpile inner strength, compassion, love, empathy, and a soft willpower that gets things done without hurting others.

We will likely not live to see the new world that will evolve from all that’s been happening over the last six years, but we must keep healing ourselves of these broken hearts over and over again so that we can go out beyond ourselves, beyond our smaller and safe communities like the ones in my classes, and do the larger work that is calling for us right now, the work that is begging to be seen and heard and done.

If you need community like this, if you need support, if you need safety, June classes are starting on June 7th, and we would love to welcome you.

Why I'm not calling it yoga anymore

If you’ve been with me on this journey and/or taken my classes over the last few years to the last 13 years, you know that when I say I’m teaching a yoga class that you just never know what you’ll get. You know that I have a hard time staying still when it comes to what and how I teach.

You know I’m a seeker and a learner and a deep diver and that eventually everything goes into the big compost heap that is my brain and eventually comes out this body via something new in class that makes us all groan or laugh or, most often, both.

You don’t take classes with me because you’re someone who needs things to always be the same or who needs to know what the heck is going to happen from minute to minute.

You take classes with me because you know I’ll keep you safe and I’ll provide a familiar context but that there will always be something different happening to take you deeper into your own experience of your body/mind/heart.

You also probably know that even though I’ve been studying different lineages of and the philosophy of yoga now for about 25 years, I’ve also always had a love/hate relationship with how it’s used and how it’s taught in the West.

There’s so much missing from what most people call “yoga.”

I've thought long and hard about all of this and have been contemplating the idea of appropriation when it comes to yoga for years now.

On top of that, I simply don’t want to be constrained by someone’s ideas of what I’m teaching just because i use the word “yoga” because it’s simpler than other words or trying to explain myself.

Like I said, you know I’ve never taught a straight up yoga class in my life. Even though my classes most likely have had more prana focus and chant than most classes out there, more emphasis on the underlying philosophy than most.

I will not be calling anything I do "yoga," though I will always source my material and much of what I teach is derived from, again, over 25 years of studying many lineages of yoga.

But I respect the spiritual foundation of yoga too much and I also do not want to associate myself with others teaching yoga in a westernized, watered down way.

So from now on, if you’re looking for my wacky take on yoga, look for Peony Method ON THE MAT or Mindful Mobility. Those will be the “non-dance” versions of my work with lots of emphasis on breath, alignment/biomechanics, nervous system regulation, glandular system stimulation, and energy body schtuff.

Things Suck So We EXTRA Need Each Other and Our Practices

I don’t have the bandwidth to write some things that need to be written, but suffice it to say, that I am beyond angry at the world and that that anger has reignited some important and powerful parts of myself.

One part of me knows absolutely for sure that we need to be MOVING in these bodies MORE THAN EVER.

The next classes of sessions starts the week of May 10 so get over here and find something to do that will ground you in your power and energy because we need all of us at our best to get the shit done in this world that desperately needs to be done.

That said… I often use the words “body liberation” and it’s not some light thing that I say about feeling comfie. It’s much much much more than that and I want us all to be on the same page (or you can always go find another book to read because this book is about radical shit):

This is #bodyliberation: Creating culture and community that embraces every single human as the beautiful, fragile yet strong, inherently dignified beings we are. No exceptions.

We are creating (and we demand) culture and community in which your inner sense of yourself and your outer expression are never expected to clash.

We will no longer settle for anything less.

We stand in circle with all beings reaching for authentic, loving lives. #translivesmatter #womensrights #transrightsarehumanrights

My Politics Addiction and Cultivating Good News Habits

I could go pretty deeply into WHY I have this issue with politics triggering such FURY in me (FURY is kinda close to what happens but it’s even worse than that), but it’s multifaceted and quite complicated, and really not the point.

The point is that my response is not healthy for me physically or emotionally or spiritually.

So I’m trying to fast, and it’s really difficult. This is definitely like an addiction.

I find myself — without any thinking whatsoever — clicking over to CNN.

I find myself — without any thinking whatsoever — halfway through writing an angry response to someone. Luckily I do notice eventually and I hit delete.

This is not about hiding my head in the sand either; it’s about being a healthy enough version of myself that I can do what I am good at doing and help the world in the ways that I am able.

It’s about about being a healthy and effectively loving human.

So now I’m looking for sources of good news and I though some of you might like these too. Because what we look for is what we see and what we see is the world we end up inhabiting in all ways.

Some of these are really new to me so I can’t speak to their quality over time, but they are decent to start with:

• Kindling is out of Washington State and has really young staff and board but I like that energy;

• The Good News Network has been around for some time.

• Good Good Good was actually inspired by Mister Rogers!

• Solutions Journalism is just that — a drive toward creating journalism that emphasizes solutions. YES.

• Positive News is out of the UK.

• Reasons to be cheerful was founded by Talking Heads’ David Byrne! (He is so freaking smart.)

• Yes! Media started as a great magazine and is now much more.

• The Happy Broadcast combines stories with art to inspire.

• And there’s Jane Goodall’s Good News for All, no explanation needed.

That’s a great start. Let me know if you have other favorite sources.